Family members of a man who was stabbed and beaten to death 30 years ago in Rowland Heights said they are outraged the alleged killers of their beloved brother and cousin could get relatively light prison sentences.

Richard Hernandez, 20, was brutally slain on Aug. 8, 1982. He and a friend were visiting with two girls when they were attacked by three men. One of the men used a tire iron in the assault that left Hernandez’s friend with permanent brain damage.

The case is only now going to court because suspects Gilbert Leal, 52, and Marcelino Diablos Corona, 50, were on the run for 30 years. According to law enforcement sources, each man was living under an assumed name in Riverside County.

Leal, in fact, was a youth sports coach and part-time volunteer with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department until his arrest in July 2012. Corona was arrested in December. A third man remains at large.

At issue for Hernandez’s family members is a proposed plea deal prosecutor Donald Clem offered to Leal and Corona. Under the terms of the deal, Leal could be sentenced to six years in state prison.

Corona, recently convicted in another — unrelated — 1982 knife assault, could get eight years. Clem has proposed that Corona’s sentence in the Hernandez case would be tied to the knife assault and run concurrently.

Effectively both men could be released from state prison in short order if the deal goes through. A judge in Pomona will decide Friday.

But there’s a hitch or two before Corona and Leal can take advantage of the prosecutor’s very generous deal.

First of all, Pomona Superior Court Judge Douglas Sortino, who has already told Clem that he was not happy with the proposal, will have to approve it. Secondly, victims rights groups, including Justice For Homicide Victims, will be in court Friday morning watching the proceedings.

Members of JHV are outraged that the concerns of surviving Hernandez family members were largely ignored by the District Attorney’s Office during the plea bargaining process.

That lack of reaching out, they say, is pretty much outside the spirit of 2008 Marsy’s Law, also known as the California Victims’ Bill of Rights.

A key provision of those rights regarding punishment reads as follows:

“(Crimes) will be appropriately and thoroughly investigated, (Criminals will be) appropriately detained in custody, brought before the courts of California even if arrested outside the State, tried by the courts in a timely manner, sentenced, and sufficiently punished so that the public safety is protected and encouraged as a goal of highest importance.”

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Hernandez’s relatives say there’s no service to the public in short-term sentences for men who changed their names and became fugitives to avoid prosecution for so long.

D.A. spokeswoman Shiara Davila-Morales said she could not discuss the situation.

“At this time, we decline to comment because this is a pending case,” she said.

Leal and Corona might have slipped under the radar. But, in a twist of fate, Leal’s son, a promising boxer, was murdered in San Jacinto in May 2011.

The slaying, known as the Facebook Murder, occurred after the younger Leal was lured to a park by a teen allegedly posing as an beautiful woman on Facebook.

During the course of their investigation, detectives fingerprinted each member of the Leal family. When they fed the information into an FBI database, they learned the elder Leal was wanted for the after-dark killing of a young man in a park in 1982.

Coincidence? Karma? Bad luck? Right now, the answers to those questions don’t matter much to Hernandez’s family. They want to be heard. They want justice.

Frank Girardot is the editor the Pasadena Star-News. He’s @FrankGirardot on Twitter.com or find him on Facebook.com/CrimeSceneBlog.